If you can turn a vacuum into an improvised weapon, DARPA may want your help

New "Improv" program will look at how commercial tech can be used against military.

In an effort to understand the kinds of improvised weapons, devices, and systems that could be used against US forces in the field today, the Defense Research Projects Agency's Defense Science Office is preparing for an alternative sort of "improv" performance. DARPA is inviting researchers, developers, and hardware-hacking hobbyists to join in, and the goal of the planned jam session is to discover ways that off-the-shelf commercial technology could be modified to be used against the military by its adversaries.

The US military has dealt with a wide range of improvised weapons and tools in the hands of adversaries over the past decade, including cell phone activated improvised explosives, off-the-shelf software used to intercept drone video feeds, and USB drives laden with malware that ran rampant on computer networks in Afghanistan. Today there's growing concern about how commercial and consumer drone and robotics technology, Internet-of-Things devices, and other burgeoning technology could be used to spy on, harass, impede, or even kill members of the military.

Enlarge/ IEDs made from artillery shells captured in Baghdad are the last generation of improvised threats. DARPA wants to know what the next is.

US Army

So today, DARPA officially unveiled Improv—a program that will fund "innovative research proposals for prototype products and systems that have the potential to threaten current military operations, equipment, or personnel and are assembled primarily from commercially available technology," according to the announcement.

The rules are pretty straightforward. "Proposers are free to reconfigure, repurpose, program, reprogram, modify, combine, or recombine commercially available technology in any way within the bounds of local, state, and federal laws and regulations," the announcement noted. "Use of components, products, and systems from non-military technical specialties (e.g., transportation, construction, maritime, and communications) is of particular interest."

Part of this broad-based hacker "red-teaming" of potential improvised threats is focused on what can be done within a tight budget and a tight deadline. Selected "performers" will compete against each other for a chance to build their prototype during a short DARPA-funded feasibility study phase (with up to $40,000 funding per individual awards). The performing teams will have only two weeks to construct a prototype once they've been chosen, with up to $70,000 additional funding and up to $20,000 for provisioning for the evaluation test.

Winning performances may be selected by DARPA for a follow-up study on how to develop countermeasures to the improvised technologies. So here's your chance to build that killer Roomba hack you've always dreamed of, or maybe an actual Fallout 4 Tactical Junk Jet—and get a foot in the door with DARPA. The program is open to all, including foreign nationals (with a bit of extra paperwork), since there's nothing particularly secret about off-the-shelf hardware and software.